14 May 2006

Kodak gets wrist slapped for spamming

Kodak settled a CAN SPAM suit with the FTC. Their Ofoto unit, which lets people upload digital photos and buy prints, sent two million commercial messages that didn't comply with the very mild requirements of CAN SPAM. In particular, they didn't include a notice that it was an ad, didn't include opt-out info, and didn't include Kodak's postal address. They paid the FTC $26,000, the revenue they got from the two million illegal messages.
Kodak claims (not altogether inplausibly) that it was a technical screwup. But $26K for two million messages does seem like a rather low response rate, doesn't it?